Daily Archives: April 19, 2013

Good piece in today’s The Chronicle of Higher Education about the slow growth in multi-year scholarships being offered after the NCAA last year adopted a policy allowing programs to guarantee athletics aid for multiple years. I think it shows that schools are feeling their way around what works for them on this front.

When things shake out, it’ll make for a useful recruiting tool, particularly for schools that can’t match the resources that some of the big boys tout.

Instead of offering more guaranteed aid, the most powerful programs are relying on their rich athletics traditions, broad television exposure, and other advantages over less-wealthy foes. But a handful of power programs appear to be using multiyear aid as a recruiting inducement in the biggest sports.

Florida says it has given multiyear awards to “pretty much every eligible football player.” At Ohio State, more than half of its 41 new offers of multiyear aid went to football and basketball players.

Some mid-major programs are using the four-year guarantees as points of differentiation against bigger programs. Fresno State University handed out 425 multiyear awards this year—one for every scholarship athlete—says Jason Clay, an assistant director of communications. One reason, he says, was to reduce pressure on students who had to compete for spots every year.

Other mid-major officials say they are open to multiyear agreements when athletes demand it.

“We’re not out there selling it, but if a student-athlete says, ‘I want a two-year deal,’ or, ‘I want this guaranteed for four years,’ we can certainly do that,” says Mario Moccia, athletic director at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

All of which makes me hope that Texas, the richest program in D-1 athletics, loses a few kids along the way because of its arrogance.

“Who gets a four-year, $120K deal guaranteed at age 17?” Christine A. Plonsky, women’s athletic director at the University of Texas, wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle. “The last thing young people need right now is more entitlement.”

Yeah, save entitlement for things like the Longhorn Network, bitches!

I guess Plonsky’s point is that at Texas, what’s sauce for the goose 50ish-year old head coach in the form of a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with buyout clause isn’t sauce for the gander student-athlete. And they say youth is wasted on the young.

I don’t know if you caught Mark Richt’s comment about the SEC going to a nine-game conference schedule in football, but it seems he’s not a fan of the concept.

“These other schools have nine but they’re not going to have that 10th game that is a team that is BCS-quality or ACC-quality or whatever you want to say,” Richt said. “I wouldn’t be shocked to see that happen. I voted against it because if we have nine, plus Tech and then if we want to do something like Clemson like we did this year, you’re talking about 11 out of 12 games that are pretty stout.”

Richt does acknowledge that if the conference adds two more schools, a nine-game schedule is inevitable. Groo wonders what that all means for the future of the Georgia Tech series.

Is the Tech game untouchable in the world of nine conference games? I’d like to think so, but let’s ask the Aggies and Longhorns. If it came down to it with nine conference games, would you prefer to keep the Tech series so that interesting nonconference games are less frequent, or would you rather drop the series if it meant a larger variety of quality opponents?

If and when the SEC goes to nine conference games, Georgia would be crazy to drop the series. Let me show you why, in a nutshell.

SERIES RECORDS 2001-2012

Georgia 11, Georgia Tech 1

Florida 7, FSU 5

South Carolina 6, Clemson 6

One of those is definitely not like the others.

Georgia gets the benefit of perception – Tech is a rival game, Tech is a major conference opponent, etc. – without taking on the burden of playing a team that mounts a serious long-term threat. The two worst teams of the Richt era notched wins over Paul Johnson’s two best teams. That’s pwnership, peeps. Why give that up as we move into an era of postseason by selection committee, when the Dawgs’ two biggest division rivals are giving up a head start almost half the time?